Let’s start with two facts. First, APIs are a central — and increasingly important — part of business infrastructure across industries in terms of both managing costs and maximizing profits. Second, developing production-ready APIs is complicated and stressful, especially when increasing financial expectations and security considerations are thrown into the mix.
The results are predictable: stressed-out developers, security vulnerabilities, and budget overruns. Teams that find a better way to build APIs could reap major rewards. So what does that take?
One step that could transform your API development process is likely simpler than you think. It all starts with better API mocking.
What’s Wrong with the API Status Quo?
Your existing API program may run like a finely tuned machine, ensuring seamless backend services and contented front-end developers. If so, congratulations!
More likely, you have some bright points surrounded by a lot of real-world challenges, and your efforts at API design-led development haven’t delivered the transformative results you hoped for. If you’re still struggling to find a process that will let you develop and test APIs more efficiently, this one is for you.
Real APIs Have Real Stakeholders
To understand the scope of the challenges facing API teams, we have to start with the three key groups of stakeholders, each of whom has a different set of goals:
API consumers: Client-side frontend developers want data in a useful, predictable format to build frontend applications that work as intended.
API producers: Backend developers want clear, consistent design deliverables to build a reliable, secure server-side system from start to finish.
Product leaders and executives: This last group wants to deliver high-quality, reliable products that meet customer needs while staying on budget and on schedule.
All these goals are important and they’re actually not incompatible. So, why do we experience conflict time and again across organizations? In large part, it’s because the industry hasn’t devised a good way to parallelize front-end and back-end development.
When everyone jumps into their side of a project simultaneously, API consumers and producers can easily get out of sync, leading to chaos. Frontend developers wind up writing HTTP requests that don’t match backend query parameters, and integration testing happens too late to be useful. Everyone ends up going back to the drawing board, having to rebuild existing APIs and blowing schedules and budgets out of the water.
Common Problems in Building APIs
Developers are no strangers to common pain points and issues as it relates to building APIs. In addition the mix of expectations described above, problems occur at a few key points:
Tedious, error-prone setup: Server-side APIs require huge amounts of boilerplate code, making the initial setup repetitive and time-consuming.
Repetitious manual work leads to developer fatigue and boredom, which make human error more likely.
Small errors in this code can be hard to spot, but can still lead to serious security issues.
The chicken-and-egg problem:
** Backend developers often can’t write API specs without feedback from frontend devs.
Frontend devs can’t give good feedback without API responses to work with…
So backend devs wind up writing code they know will never be used – it's demoralizing and wasteful!
**Costs and risks spread: Getting to a production API and client app on schedule almost always involves a sprint to the finish because so much time is wasted along the way.
The rush to get the two sides aligned introduces more bugs and propagates existing ones.
Hurrying the final testing and review steps might seem like it could save your schedule and budget, but the reality is that the risks and costs just grow bigger as they get pushed further into production.
Developer burnout is a real phenomenon, and when you consider how much of developers’ time, skill, and effort go to waste, it's easy to see why. Developers are a precious resource — not to mention actual people — and a process that squanders their value needs to be fixed.
Why Better API Development Is Hard — and Valuable!
The reason APIs are such a powerful business tool is that they enable flexible, high-volume data sharing between organizations. That’s the same reason the challenges in how to build an API are so complex — it’s difficult to nail down design and technical details with multiple stakeholders, shifting use cases, and an evolving data landscape.
Improving the status quo in API development involves addressing all these factors. We must enable developers to build more and better code faster, collaboration must be more efficient, and business leaders must know they’re on track to avoid risk and return solid growth.
Holistic, lasting improvement occurs one step at a time. There is no magic fix that can address everything, but let’s start with mocking.
Fast and Flexible API Mocking Is a Must-Have
As we look to establish a smoother process for building APIs, Mocking is a foundation to tackle many common challenges.
What Is Mocking an API?
Mocking APIs is a practice that simulates the behavior of a real API, allowing frontend and backend developers to work in parallel and test API contracts before the backend code is complete. A mock API has functional api endpoints that provide sample responses, either static or dynamic.
Many mocking tools use the Open API Specification to configure those endpoints and responses, so once you’ve settled on specifications, you’ll be ready to work with other OpenAPI-based tools in other parts of your development process.
When to Create a Mock?
Mocking should be your immediate next step following the initial endpoint design. You’ll get the most benefit if you use it to allow frontend and backend teams to work simultaneously. Mocking can seed a timely, tight feedback loop between client-side and server-side developers, letting them work out exact details before development goes too far.
By validating your specs early with a mock, you guarantee that your API will meet everyone’s expectations and catch problems before they get replicated. In turn, you facilitate standards and processes that reduce human error and eliminate major refactoring.
The Risks of Testing Without Mocking
The alternative to using mock APIs is to run your integration and usability tests with a live API. Unless you want to pay for production-quality infrastructure during testing, you’ll likely encounter problems with slow servers, unstable dev environments, and service outages. If you’re trying to test while the API is still under development, you’ll also have to deal with unexpected updates and inconsistent documentation.
Mocking provides a stable, controlled environment to develop and test against, reducing inconsistency and letting developers on both ends of the API work with fewer disruptions. You get a higher-quality API in less time and at a lower cost, with happier developers.
What’s the Best Way to Mock Your APIs?
All those benefits will only come to fruition if your developers use an effective mocking process. As it turns out, there’s a fair amount of variation in what different mocking tools offer.
The best tools are fast and intuitive and work the way users want. If your mocking tools don’t deliver on those expectations, your developers won’t use them.
4 Core Features of Better Mocking
When we created Blackbird, we set out to solve real-world API development problems, starting with a focus on how developers actually work. When it came to mocking, we wanted to make it easy to create mocks and run integration tests with existing APIs.
We structured the process around single endpoints and HTTP requests so you can return data quickly and get timely feedback on mock responses. From there, you can develop and test your API design, confident you’re building what API consumers want.
Some specific features make Blackbird a tool developers want to use:
- Share the URL for a new mock API in just a few minutes Developers can create mocks instantly on their local machine: The timeline from idea to interactive mock API is a few minutes, making it easy to iterate and experiment. Collaboration is fast and easy: Spinning up a shareable cloud-hosted mock server is fast enough to do between meetings instead of taking hours, so backend and frontend teams can exchange ideas on the fly. Sharing a URL doesn’t take any shared infrastructure: This means your DevOps team doesn’t need to be involved in the mocking process. Everyone can focus on their core work because the Ambassador cloud securely hosts the mocks.
- Combine static and dynamic responses for different use cases Static responses make basic testing fast, easy, and consistent: Create them instantly for rapid prototyping and early development stages. Dynamic responses are more realistic and help simulate stateful data: This is essential for testing sequential operations. Dynamic responses are a valuable tool for integration and load testing that doesn’t require you to provision infrastructure. Combine dynamic mock responses with a proxy server for a live API to test potential changes: Simulate a production-like environment without affecting existing APIs.
- Create mocks in the browser or from the command line Command-line control fits easily with developer workflows: Developers can create and configure mock APIs with the CLI tool for a quick setup without leaving the IDE. A drag-and-drop UI that’s great for collaboration: Anyone on your technical teams can create a mock API with Blackbird, regardless of their ability to code.
- AI-assisted spec and code generation make the transition from idea to deployment Create a spec based on an idea: Use the AI chat-based spec generator to create an OpenAPI spec and mock an API from a concept. Generate boilerplate code: This lets you cut down the tedious early stages of building an API. Turn the spec from your mock server into the initial code for your live API, saving significant time and reducing opportunities for error. Developers get to focus on meaningful work: When teams spend less time on rote tasks, they can stay in a creative flow state, developing better API designs. Benefits of Using a Mocking Tool like Blackbird What Difference Does the Right Tool Make? The right tool speeds up your development process by eliminating repetitive manual work. It saves time by making collaboration instant, so feedback gets shared as quickly as possible. It reduces redundant efforts by allowing frontend and backend teams to work in parallel without creating a need to refactor code.
Finding the right tool reduces stress for everyone involved by making testing easier and more reliable. The code behind your production API becomes more secure and consistent, reducing your ongoing risk and maintenance costs.
The Cost of Bad Tools
But choose the wrong tool, and your developers will find API mocking costly and time-consuming. If the headaches caused are bad enough, devs may skip the process entirely.
This pushes more problems further along in the SDLC, leading to more errors getting kicked back from the CI CD pipeline, and more client-side complaints about unusable responses.
Getting It Right with Blackbird
Blackbird gives you time back by letting developers instantly launch a mock server and keeps all players happy with baked-in flexibility and speed.
We built Blackbird to address high-priority problems that hold API teams back, focusing on the needs of the engineers who build APIs. In turn, everyone who depends on those developers downstream — product leaders, executives, and customers — reaps the benefits of better APIs and lower costs. It’s a win-win, and you get it by choosing the right tool.
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